[quote=@Grimhildr]
i like to consider the phrase in a physical sense.

if you have a huge bathtub (a roleplay with no limits) and only so much water (creativity/inspiration), you'll struggle to fill it. there'll be less substance to your writing and a lot of the times it'll just be fluff with no actual point to it, because, let's face it, if you can write only a couple paragraphs of actual content, you'll try to pad it out even just a bit.

however, if you have a smaller container (a roleplay with limits) and the same amount of water (creativity/inspiration), you'll fill it perfectly and never have to wrack your brain for extra stuff you might be able to put in. you'll avoid more cliches, you'll think of cool workarounds the limits, and you'll maybe even add a few stuff you never would've had in a setting with no limits.

it's hard to explain, but i definitely believe that limits breed creativity.
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Yet I can provide dozens of counterexamples from my own experience. I'd like to reiterate from my first post that we can't really talk about limitations in general because different limitations tend to have different effects; I demonstrated that some limitations are very positive while others are very negative. We can definitely say concrete things about certain limitations, especially common ones that I see everywhere. Examples and counterexamples discussed in general won't get us anywhere unless we discuss specific limitations.